The Lifebook of Captain Jim
by simplecoffee
Summary: An ongoing series of unconnected oneshots, revolving  mostly  around our golden Cap'n.
1. The Lifebook of Captain Jim

**Title:**_The Life-Book of Captain Jim_

**Rating:** T

**Word count: **943

**Warnings:** spoilers for _The Conscience of the King – _and schmoop in barrels. Barrels, I say.

**Pairings:** none

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Star Trek. ("Computed and recorded, dear.")

A/N: First (and titular) in a series of unconnected oneshots. Also, this may _seem_ like a crossover, but it really isn't – it's just me using a certain book to facilitate the aforementioned barrels of schmoop.

A/N 2: I am _so sorry_ for disappearing, and I'm working on _This Above All_, I promise! It's just that Real Life's being a bit of a pain. I'm so sorry, and thank you all for bearing with me (and for your wonderful, encouraging reviews - and KCS for adding it to her favourites, thank you so much)! While I get on with _This Above All, _here are the first two oneshots of a projected nine. (At least).

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><p><em>The revolution is successful, but survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore, I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, Governor of Tarsus IV.<em>

The words echoed through Leonard's mind, chilling and unforgettable. How often had he heard those very words only to shudder and turn off the newscast, never imagining how much more they could come to mean?

How had they sounded to a teenaged, furious, _terrified_ Jim Kirk?

"Do you play God?" he'd demanded."Carry his head through the corridors in triumph? That won't bring back the dead, Jim!"

"No," Jim had replied, jaw set, deadly quiet, "but they may rest easier."

Justice was logical, vengeance was not; yet it was Jim Kirk's burning sense of justice that had led to his equally burning desire for revenge. And Jim would not be deterred, for his was not the kind of desire that flared and died, but that which flamed and festered until satisfied. The desire for vengeance not for oneself, but for countless innocents – countless loved ones – countless lives taken and countless ruined.

Kodos had died, though not by Jim's hand – Jim whose sense of fairness had driven him to make absolutely certain of the man's identity before bringing any accusation against him. Lenore Karidian had collapsed and eventually come to with lacunar amnesia, and the CMO had gone up to the bridge to give the captain her medical report.

After his shift, Jim had disappeared entirely.

Leonard had found him curled up in his quarters with a migraine so severe it had him almost delirious.

Five minutes later, as he tucked a heavily medicated captain under the covers and decided to stay awhile in case he awoke, his hand brushed something hard under the pillow.

It was a book – an honest-to-goodness real-paper _book_. He'd heard rumours before of Jim's eccentricity when it came to them; here, in his hand, was proof.

_Anne's House of Dreams_, said the cover – and Leonard had just delightedly classified it as blackmail material when he caught sight of the numeral '5' on the spine.

Book _five_…of, said the blurb, the Green Gables series.

He had read Anne of Green Gables himself when young – it was a classic – and he certainly remembered liking it; curiously he began to read. So Anne, delightful redheaded Anne, had grown up, had she – grown up and become a teacher, then married Gilbert Blythe!

The book was not overly intellectual, but with each chapter Leonard realized more and more why Jim liked it. The ethereal charm possessed by Anne had also belonged to the author, and her very phrasing of thoughts and ideas had an oddly calming quality. There was depth to her observations of Canadian country life, the nuances of which she brought daintily and elegantly to the surface, and lines here and there revealed a mildly sardonic sense of humour not unlike Jim's own. The characters were strong and deftly sketched, even those that appeared but briefly – from Marilla and Diana to Doctor Dave and his wife, and – Leonard felt his heart ascend to his throat – from page twenty-six onward, the charming, boyish old sailor, Captain Jim.

'Captain Jim was a high-souled, simple-minded old man, with eternal youth in his eyes and heart'. He had a way – a gentle, gracious way – with the ladies, but his eyes 'sometimes looked out seaward with a wistful quest in them, as of one seeking something precious and lost'; 'lost Margaret' had been and was his one true love. He had a cat called the First Mate – how Leonard laughed at _that_, what with the ship's resident Vulcan! And Captain Jim had a life-book: an imperfectly written collection of his adventures – adventures in which, though he never said a boastful word, 'it was impossible to help seeing what a hero the man had been – brave, true, resourceful, unselfish'. A man with a collection of curios, a knack for storytelling and the sea in his blood.

"_I wonder why he never married," said Anne. "He should have sons with their ships at sea now, and grandchildren clambering over him to hear his stories – he's that kind of a man. Instead, he has nothing but a magnificent cat."_

In that moment, Leonard 'Bones' McCoy was certain of what he had probably known all along – that, though fighting it tooth and nail, that was the way Jim Kirk would age. He would spend his life with the Enterprise as his lover; there would come a time when one would speak of him as Anne of her own Captain Jim – he would transition from young, dashing, debonair and handsome to an aging, still charismatic legend. He would have a magnificent Vulcan (and an old country doctor). And, as he had once murmured while morbidly loopy on Bones' red pills, Captain Jim Kirk would die alone.

And the Lenore Karidian Incident had served to inform his friends of how close he had been to it on Tarsus IV.

That if Kodos had had his way, there would have been no Jim – no Jim with his golden eyes and his radiant smile and his brilliant mind and his annoying habit of sneaking out of Sickbay; there would have been no _Jim_.

The thought was so overwhelming that Leonard reached over and scooped his sleeping captain into the closest hug he could manage.

"And dammit, Jim," he muttered grumpily, "if you dare to remember this when you wake up, I'll whack you over the head with a tricorder."


	2. Riveted

**Title:**_ Riveted_

**Rating:** T

**Word count: **573

**Warnings:** Uh, sensuousness? …Also, please read this through to the end. I don't want to say anything more for fear of spoiling it, but please do? :D

**Pairings:** That'd be telling. (Nothing really explicit, though – I don't do explicit. Only classy. I hope.)

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Star Trek. ("Computed and recorded, dear.")

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><p>"Jim," said the voice.<p>

It was a voice at once authoritative and open, at once gentle and commanding, at once hard as metal and soft as a lover's touch; and he wasn't even sure he'd heard it.

"James Kirk," it whispered clearly, and this time he was sure he had. Low and oddly sweet, it was an unnervingly _familiar_ voice – and yet he had never heard it before.

The last vestiges of sleep left him; he sat up, stretching quickly and noticing he'd fallen asleep in the jeans and button-down shirt he'd worn down to the planet that afternoon, and wondered how it was that he hadn't woken at her entry.

"Lights," he said, and they came up; not too low and not too bright – just the way he liked them.

She was ever so slightly shorter than he, her lithe, shapely body sheathed in a short dress of an off-white material that was obviously soft and comfortable, and yet gave the impression of hardness; her knee-high boots were the same. Her luxuriant, almost burnished auburn hair fell gently over her forehead in much the way his own did, and she had a finely sculpted face; her forehead told of a capable intellect, her jaw of an iron will and her lips and violet eyes of the intensity, the ferocity with which she could love.

"I…know you," he whispered, standing up.

"You know me, Jim," she agreed with a smile – a tender, _caring _smile – and suddenly she was by his side, her hands on his shoulders; gentle hands, easing the tension he hadn't known was there.

"Denim," she added with a quirk of her lips that indicated approval. "It looks good on you – and stands the test of actually going on a mission with you far better than velour." Jim couldn't suppress a slight answering grin; how often had Bones – and even Spock, though he'd never admit it, the sneaky Vulcan – ribbed him about the number of shirts he went through?

He _knew_ this lady, knew her touch and her walk and the slightly metallic smell of her hair, but when it came to her identity, his memory seemed a blank.

"Who _are_ you?" he wanted to ask her, but the words died in his throat; running a finger down his jaw, she seemed to read his mind.

"I love you, you know," she said gently. "I've loved you ever since you first touched me. And I shouldn't be, I know – but I'm frightfully possessive of you. Captain James Tiberius Kirk – " she pronounced each syllable of his name with a tantalizing sort of relish – "I – love – you."

And he knew with a sudden certainty that almost swept him off his feet – knew that with all his soul, he loved her too.

Before either knew it they were in each other's arms, fitting each other perfectly, their lips together in a long, sensuous, gentle kiss; her hand was behind his head, then at his forehead, brushing the errant lock of hair back where it belonged.

"But you're tired, Jim," she said tenderly, "and you need your sleep, or the Doctor will probably explode with indignation. Goodnight, my dear – for now."

She kissed him at the jaw and broke away.

And in the split second she took to fondle his collar one last time, he saw the letters that were part of her flesh – the small black digits just above her right collarbone.

_NCC-1701._

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><p>AN: Kirk/Enterprise. I ship it so hard it's ridiculous – even when she isn't, you know, inexplicably human.  
>Also, I do <em>not<em> know why the human!Enterprise in my head has a slightly British turn of phrase.  
>Also, Jim in denim? YES PLEASE.<p>

Do please review? :D


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